Paula, a service user representative, shares her experience of how to accept imperfection or unfinished events.
Are you a person who, to coin a phrase, ‘procrastinates their personal happiness’? Are you someone who defers feeling happy until the business to hand, whatever that may be, is completed and 100% perfect? Do you refuse to celebrate the good things – even the wonderful things – because some other things are incomplete?
Well, you are not alone. I – probably like a lot of other people too - spent a lot of time thinking that I would be happy when I had absolutely everything as I liked it. This mindset catapulted me onto a track of non-acceptance of my personal life. I decided that absolutely everything must be perfect: 100%. I would either have everything or nothing.
This ‘all or nothing’ mentality is a recipe for disaster. It’s impossible to have that kind of control over our lives. It is also a bully and a taskmaster. It’s that voice in our heads that relentlessly drives us on to the utopia we think we must find – a mythical state that doesn’t exist - and often brings on the exact opposite state – a dystopia - within us.
Life is full of bits and pieces. Our approach to these bits and pieces is, therefore, very important. The truth is that they are inescapable. We each of us have a plethora of things to do every day. They can come before us, like a mountain to climb. We can get up every day and chastise ourselves for not being ‘better organised’; for not having ‘made more progress’; for not completing our ‘to do’ list. These things can deflate us, discourage us, encroach on our happiness if we do not address them as they present themselves before us. We must protect ourselves from the misconception that we need to be slave of ourselves: we must NOT give ourselves that permission.
The more we become well, the more demands are made on us – but this is not a cause for alarm: it is a celebration of life. As human beings, we are hot-wired for happiness and we strive after it, even sub-consciously. But this desire can become distorted when we, in a way, choose not to be happy because we won’t be happy while things aren’t perfect or while we are working out the things in life whose endings we cannot see. This is a big mistake! For example, take a student teacher who won’t be happy until they qualify: they are putting off their happiness for another three years. Or suppose someone is working but won’t be happy until they have their first house, or is learning to drive and won’t be happy to until they have bought their first car – in each case, they are waiting for perfection or putting off their happiness.
I remember I had a few ideas in my head years ago about how I wanted things in my life to be perfect and for myself to be perfect too. I had little difficulty accepting other, ordinary people and where they were at, but I couldn’t accept myself. I had a rather long list of what I demanded of myself, and my life, which went something like this: "Now is not the time to be happy. I need to be like other people whom I admire; I need to have a big job, and lots of money; I need to travel the world; I need lots and lots of close friends; I need to go to college and graduate; I need, I need, I need…”.
When we live like this, we are joining cahoots with the insistent voice in our head which never lets up; we are in bondage to the impossible standards we have set ourselves. We metaphorically whip ourselves for NOT being perfect, for not getting things right. We scrutinise, or examine, our own efforts like an unjust judge.
We were never meant to behave this way or to be submerged by our own standards. We were meant to accept that life is messy, untidy, and full of unfinished business: this is the status quo. There is no magic wand to wipe away our need to attend to the small and big things set before us. We can’t wipe away the things we need to attend to and do – but who set the bar so high? Who demands us to be so exact or to punish ourselves? Mostly, it’s us who push ourselves. In most cases, nobody is standing over us, exacting every last shred of effort.
The beginning of the end of this behaviour is to give ourselves permission to back down and relax into our lives. We were meant to do things one at a time, to undertake things piecemeal. Just because things are unfinished doesn’t mean we have made a monumental mistake, or that we are overpowered. It just requires some acceptance on our part to keep going, not to throw up our hands in despair.
Patience with yourself is key. The next time you feel like giving up, remind yourself of how well you have done and how much progress you have made. Neither you nor I are competing in the Olympics. We are on the road of life and things will get done, in a satisfactory way, when we accept how things are now.
Decide to abandon the strident criticism of yourself now and to embrace the many events and the unfinished business that make up your life. You owe it to yourself. Don’t say to yourself: ‘I’ll be happy WHEN I have my degree; WHEN I win that competition; WHEN I date that guy; WHEN I own that apartment”. Equally, avoid telling yourself, ‘I’ll be happy IF I earn a lot of money’; IF I travel the world; IF I live somewhere else’. The list can go on and on. The desire may change from person to person, but the underlying message remains the same: we essentially tell ourselves that we have no right to be happy until everything is complete and perfect in our lives.
If you continue in this way, then your quest for happiness will never come about. You will always be after something, and since you can’t achieve all of these things all at once, there will always unfinished business, so you will be discontent. And supposing that you miraculously got everything finished and in order, how long before you find you have another thing to finish and get in order? The saga never ends.
Sometimes, letting go of our exacting desire for happiness leaves room for happiness to arrive as a matter of course, to be a positive consequence of how we live our lives, without making it an impossible achievement.
The beauty of human life is that we can change course at any time: everyone is free to choose another road to the road they are on now. You may not like where you are now, but you can reach a point where you WILL like where you are. For instance, as you have probably gathered, most of those ideas I had for myself a few years ago never happened. Some came to pass, but most didn’t. But somehow it is so much easier to accept where I am now, and what I have. I have learnt mostly to shred the impossible demands I placed on myself. You too can shred the desire for perfection in yourself and in your life.
I hope these insights I have gained, will bless you as they have blessed me. If your life is like the one I described earlier, you are free to be free, to look at life with a gentler eye, and to allow yourself to be happy. You may be your own worst taskmaster, so throw away the whip. And when that annoying voice in your head tries to criticise you, just let it go. It is your life, so own it and live it with self-acceptance and happiness. Where there is life, there is hope.
